 and Holloway (center) present Doylean Honor to Glatzer.jpg)
The Envelopes Please ... for the
Fourth Annual Doylean Honors
January 22, 2025 — It was with pleasure, pride, and great respect that we announced our 2025 Doylean Honorees, who were honored last Thursday in a ceremony at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
For Lifetime Service:
For excellence in the "Performing Arts" category:
• Mark Gatiss for the film, "Lot 249" (Adorable Media/BBC Arts)
• Hal Glatzer for the radio play, "Flatfinders 1881" (In the picture above, Glatzer (right) receives his award from selection committee chairs Crystal Noll (left) and Heather Holloway.)
For excellence in the "Fiction and Poetry" category:
• Margie Deck for the story collection, "The Genius of the Place" (Belanger Books)
• Daniel Friedman and Eugene Friedman for the poem, "At the Crossroads of Fate" (Belanger Books)
• Nicholas Meyer for the novel, "Sherlock Holmes and the Telegraph from Hell" (Mysterious Press) (In the picture below, Meyer (right) receives his award from selection committee chair Derrick Belanger.)
 presents Doylean Honor to Meyer.jpg)
For excellence in the "Visual Arts" category:
• Megan Oldhues for the painting, "The End of Devil Hawker" (Sherlock Holmes Walk Mural Art)
• Molly Knox Ostertag for the drawing, "Watson’s Sketchbook: Volume 1" (MKO Books)
For excellence in the "Scholarly Writing" category:
• Anne Chapman for the article, "Authority and medical expertise: Arthur Conan Doyle in The Idler," in Medical Humanities (a journal of the Institute of Medical Ethics)
• Ollie Randall for the article, "Cricket, Literary Culture and In-Groups in Early Twentieth-Century Britain," in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Cambridge Univ. Press)
Congratulations to all! To see and hear the entire awards ceremony, visit Doings of Doyle. Photographs courtesy of Mark Jones.
And we have more good news: Next year's Doylean Honors ceremony will be held at The Mysterious Bookshop on Thursday, January 8, starting at 11:15 a.m.
Striking Imagery from Finalists for
"Visual Arts" Doylean Honors
January 12, 2025 — Jessie Amaolo, chair of the "Visual Arts" selection committee for the annual Doylean Honors awards, has announced this year's finalists: Molly Knox Ostertag, Erica Gosich Rose (whose work appears above), Fatspatrol, Tony Winterbottom, Heidi Berton, and Megan Oldhuges. The two winners (one for a Sherlockian work, one for a non-Sherlockian work) will be announced by selection committee member Edward G. Pettit during the Doylean Honors awards ceremony at at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop. We hope to see you there! If you cannot attend, you can still enjoy the show online. Details and free registration here.
In The New Pink 'Un:
The Latest News About the Wessex Cup
December 26, 2024 — For the latest in Doylean sporting news, read The New Pink 'Un. In the new issue released today — and available free here — you will find details about the upcoming running of the Wessex Cup, including reflections on the new horses by equestrian outfitter extraordinaire Peggy MacFarlane, a complete bracket, and more. The 2025 running of the Wessex Cup will take place at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop, as will our Doylean Honors ceremony. This year, the proceedings will take place on January 16, beginning at 11:15 a.m. We hope to see you there!
Off to the Races with New
Wooden Wessex Cup Ponies
December 4, 2024 — Our racing season is officially (or at last practically) open, with stables for the 2025 running of the Wessex Cup available (though perhaps only briefly) for purchase here. As ever, the Wessex Cup races will take place at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop, as will our Doylean Honors ceremony. This year, the proceedings will take place on January 16, beginning at 11:15 a.m. We hope to see you there!
"A Common Newsletter" Is in the Mail …
with News About a Wooden Horse
November 30, 2024 — Volume 4, number 3 of our newsletter has entered the postal system. So, sometime in the next few weeks it will arrive on the doorsteps of subscribers around the world. Readers will receive the latest news of our Doylean Honors ceremony and views (including a first look at a new kind of pony) of our Wessex Cup races coming up on January 16 at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop. Other features and news include page 9 of the "Blue John Gap" manuscript from Margie Deck and Nancy Holder's Blue John Gap Project, recent ACD-related ghostly hearings and sightings, and more. In due course an electronic edition will be available for free right here.
The Terror Is Back, and
This Time It's Like an (or the) Inferno
November 23, 2024 — We are up to page 9 of Arthur Conan Doyle's autograph manuscript of "The Terror of Blue John Gap," which prompts Gareth Reeves's comparisons of this story to the works of Mary Shelley, Dante Alighieri, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and Edward Gibbon. "Terror" editors Margie Deck and Nancy Holder provide their customary dose of insight, and there are fresh additions to earlier pages by Rudy Altergott (on page b) and Kris Hambrick (on page d). Read, and enjoy, and shiver!
It's "Doylean Honors" Season!
Nominate Your 2023 & 2024 Favorites
September 11, 2024 — Now is the time to nominate your favorite recent works of Doylean fiction, poetry, performing art, visual art, and scholarship for our annual "Doylean Honors" awards. We've made one big change this time around: In each category, we will award one Doylean Honor for a Sherlockian work, and one for a non-Sherlockian work. You are free to make up to five nominations for each. The nomination forms will be posted here as they go live, and the deadline for nominations is November 15, 2024. So do it now (or soon)! Tell our selection committees what fine Doylean creative and scholarly works from 2023 and 2024 are worthy of recognition at our fourth annual awards ceremony. As ever, the event will be held at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Workshop in New York City, during the long "Birthday Weekend" in January. This time around it will be on January 16, 2024, starting at 11:15 a.m. sharp. We hope to hear from you soon with your nominations, and to see you at the Bookshop in January. If you cannot attend in person, you can still enjoy the event live online, courtesy of Doings of Doyle. Register for free streaming right here!
The Terror Is Back, with
Matches that Are Doubly Terrifying
July 17, 2024 — Making fire can be as terrible as losing it, as Cynthia Brown explains in her essay accompanying page 8 of Margie Deck and Nancy Holder's "The Terror of Blue John Gap" project. Brown's work, an introduction to page 8 by Deck and Holder, and a tasty new essay for page 1 by Steve Mason, are ready to read in the Blue John Gap.
Worldwide Doyle 2024 Is Watchable Now
July 17, 2024 — Thanks to Mark Jones of Doings of Doyle, all four of this year's presentations from the Portsmouth Libraries' "Worldwide Doyle 2024" events are available to view for free, in their entirety on the Doings of Doyle YouTube channel. Thank you Mark and thank you DoD!
A Truly Picture-esque Meeting
of the Bimetallic Question
May 14, 2024 — We are late (but, we hope, not too late) with our report that the Bimetallic Question is meeting TONIGHT to conduct another “All of Doyle” session, focusing this time on ACD's writing on photography during the 1880s. The reading list is a selection of short and interesting articles, all of which are available at Alexis Barquin’s priceless Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia: After Cormorants with a Camera (1881), On the Slave Coast with a Camera (1882), Up an African River with a Camera (1882), Dry Plates on a Wet Moor (1882), Southsea: Three Days in Search of Effects (1883), To the Waterford Coast and Along It (1883), A Day on "The Island" (1884), Easter Monday with a Camera (1884), Arran in Autumn (1885), With a Camera on an African River (1885). If you would like to receive a Zoom link for the event, please send a request to info@bimetallicquestion.org.
"A Common Newsletter" Is in the Mail …
and Off to the Races
April 4, 2024 — Volume 4, number 1 of our newsletter has entered the postal system. So, sometime in the next few weeks it will arrive on the doorsteps of subscribers around the world. Readers will receive the latest news about our Doylean Honors and Wessex Cup events held in January at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop. Other features and news include ACD in Parliament and Windsor Castle, page 7 of the "Blue John Gap" manuscript from Margie Deck and Nancy Holder's Blue John Gap Project (accompanied by the first few paragraphs of a characteristically madcap essay by Paul Thomas Miller of Southsea), and more. In due course an electronic edition will be available for free right here. The photograph above was snapped by Christopher Zordan on January 11, during the 2nd running of the Wessex Cup. Al Rosenblatt, Curtis Armstrong, Ashley Polasek, Matt Hall, and Peggy MacFarlane watch Madeline Quiñones and Monica Schmidt urge their wayward wind-up ponies to cross the finish line while Mark Jones records the progress of the race.
The Terror Is Back, and
This Time It Is Terribly Big
March 31, 2024 — Like powerful forces (actually, they are powerful!) that return to terrify the innocent again and again, Margie Deck and Nancy Holder are back with yet another combination of commentary about, and terror inspired by, ACD's "The Terror of Blue John Gap." Page 7 of their project is now online — with a facsimile (and transcription) of that page of ACD's autograph manuscript, accompanied by Margie and Nancy's own commentary ("Intuition & Insight") and new essays by Paul Thomas Miller ("What Is That Mark?") and Phil Bergem ("Conan Doyle and Elephants"). Read and feel "a most unpleasant sinking of [your] heart."
Questions? Comments? Ideas?
Please email us at acdsocy@gmail.com.
By the way, if you want to support the ACD Society more generously, please feel free to send a larger Paypal or check to the Green Bag (the organization that is collecting our dues and paying our bills now and will for the foreseeable future be covering the difference between dues coming in and expenses going out). It is a 501(c)(3) and will gladly send a receipt.
Thank you for reading!
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